


Crete

by scioscribe



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Gang Rape, Hurt/Comfort, Iddy Iddy Bang Bang 2019, M/M, Rape Aftermath, Soul Bond, Telepathic Bond, noncon not between main pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-17 22:16:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20628410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: When pirates capture theEnterprise, Kirk--with the help of a handful of Venus drugs--improvises a distraction he can neither entirely predict nor entirely control.





	Crete

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe) in the [iibb2019](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/iibb2019) collection. 

> **Prompt:**
> 
> OTT hurt/comfort get-together fic in which Bad Things Happen to Jim Kirk.
> 
> (There are more charitable interpretations of Theseus--and kinder versions of his story--than the one Kirk ultimately lands on; the different adjustments over time are actually really interesting in their own right.)

Pure protocol, confiscating the remaining Venus drugs from Harry Mudd. Kirk remembered filling out the chain of evidence form for them—a rare bit of paperwork for a starship captain, but not one that was unheard of. He’d had the PADD balanced on one knee while he listened to Bones and Spock hash out the science of it all.

“Ninety percent snake oil and five more percent pure hokum,” Bones said. “But that still leaves the remaining five percent, Spock, and there’s no way around it.”

“There may be no way around it for a human mind, doctor. But your percentages, however fanciful and unfounded, neglect the fact that the drug’s slight telepathic component would be very nearly ineffectual on a Vulcan—on the spectator’s end.” Spock shrugged gracefully. “Rendering the drug, from my point of view, fully one hundred percent… hokum.”

“You didn’t think those women were beautiful?”

“I noted the prevailing symmetry of their features.”

“Well, you would be tone-deaf to beauty.”

“It is illogical to use an auditory description for a purely visual experience.” Spock tilted his head. “However, Vulcan ancestry on the part of the individual ingesting the drug would enhance its effect, not stifle it. In which case your percentages would have to be adjusted yet again.”

“Assuming I wanted to account for Vulcans.”

“And why wouldn’t you?” Kirk said easily, intervening to save himself a headache. “I’d personally account for them any day of the week.”

“I’m sure you would,” Bones said under his breath.

Was he, now? _Bad news, if I’m that obvious. _But then again, Bones knew him well—too well.

He finished signing the documents. “And, gentlemen, what are we debating, exactly?”

McCoy folded his arms. “I’m trying to explain to Spock that the Venus drug _does _have a mild telepathic component to it, that’s all. Oh, not the way Mudd explained it. It doesn’t shower you with some dope’s idea of the essence of femininity or masculinity or what-have-you. What it does is give you the temporary ability to fudge how other people see you. Those women used their brains—and these little red pills—to sell us on the idea that they were all Aphrodite, because that’s what they wanted. But they could have made us think they were Medusas, if they’d wanted that instead. There’s a real component to it that Spock’s just dismissing out of hand.”

“Not out of hand, doctor,” Spock said. “I merely point out that species with a higher average psi rating than humans would be less likely to be affected by the drug, as spectators, and more likely to be able to powerfully use it, if taking the drug themselves.”

“Well, of course they would.”

“So you’re violently agreeing with each other,” Kirk said, amused.

McCoy blew out an exasperated breath. “Seems that way, doesn’t it?”

“In any case I’m grateful for the psychochemistry lesson.”

_Grateful._

If he’d known then just how grateful—

Because now here he was, running down the corridor like a madman, hoping he’d be reach the confiscation locker in time. And _time _was the word. Time was what he needed.

***

He had done it to himself.

Their orders had been to apprehend a band of pirates that had been raiding Federation trade routes. It was necessary work. The pirates—captained by a man named Charles Venner—had left half-a-dozen ships stripped down to their bones; his favorite trick was to compromise the ships’ life support on his way out, forcing the dazed crews to scramble just to keep breathing, completely ruling out the possibility of a chase. Venner was cruel—and careful. His strikes were surgical in their precision—except, as Bones pointed out, he pulled off his wholesale extractions quicker than any surgeon would have. He worked at a lightning pace. Eyewitnesses reported that his demeanor was always frenetic, even a little nervous; it created the impression of vulnerability, though so far anyone who’d tried to exploit that had failed miserably. Evidently the anxiety was purely time-related. Venner didn’t delay long enough for the rapes and beatings a less ambitious pirate would have doled out, no, but when he wanted a security code and whoever had it was holding their tongue, well. Kirk had seen the aftermath of those cases of effective, expedient torture.

“He is relentless,” Spock observed. “But I am given to understand that humans romanticize pirates.”

“Pirate stories, Mr. Spock, more than the pirates themselves—or more than the real ones, anyway. Can’t imagine anyone swooning over Venner.”

“Yet you had a perverse admiration for Khan.”

“Khan built as much as he destroyed. Far from a good man, I’ll grant you, but maybe a great one nonetheless.”

“And Venner?”

“A scavenger. His innovation doesn’t even surpass a hyena’s.”

“And the hyena, at least, is fulfilling its biological niche. I could not say the same for a pirate.”

And Venner’s crimes on land were no less notable than those in space, even if they formed no part of Kirk’s mandate. Ashore, Venner took the time for every vice he curtailed in his raids, and his tastes ran to pretty, soft-faced blondes, men and women so innocent it hurt to look at them.

Apparently he had a penchant for scrubbing that light from their eyes. The charges were—extensive.

Oh, Kirk had all the sound moral reasons in the world for wanting to see Venner put away. But aside from all of that, at some grubby lower deck of his soul, he was just _irritated_. It _affronted _him that Venner called himself a captain. It _rankled _him that the man always seemed to be one step ahead of him, that his streamlined and modified-to-the-gills ship hit speeds even the _Enterprise _wasn’t capable of.

So he asked Scotty to give them a push—a big one.

Scotty told him the laws of physics wouldn’t permit it, not for a vessel their size.

Kirk asked for a smaller push, then. Anything.

Scotty chewed on his lip and said he couldn’t promise the engines would be up for it.

Kirk said, “I’m tired of chasing, Mr. Scott. I think it’s past time we caught what we were after.”

***

And now: stranded. Completely dead in the water. The universe’s biggest sitting duck.

A pirate’s dream, naturally. It took Venner no time at all to realize that the tables had turned and that his pursuers were now at his mercy.

They’d had a chance in the firefight, but not much of one. Their phaser-power considerably surpassed Venner’s, but their shields quickly drained from holding up against a prolonged barrage—and Venner could take evasive maneuvers while the _Enterprise _just hung there. It was all over now. Being boarded was inevitable. It was a matter of minutes.

The pirates wouldn’t kill them unless they proved themselves an obstacle. They were still primarily interested in scavenging, not in bringing the whole wrath of Starfleet down on their heads by taking out a flagship. But violence was too much of a possibility all the same. They’d want to vent their frustrations. Take a little revenge.

Kirk curled his hands around the arms of his chair, holding himself in place. “Uhura, urgent, mass-dispersal distress signal. Throw the net as wide as you can get it.”

“Yes, sir.” She sounded almost unruffled. Communications officers, Kirk had found, were usually the stalwart kind, so well-versed in overhearing other people’s emotions that they wound up with a masterful control over their own. Uhura’s steady voice was a balm to the ship’s soul. “I’ll make it strong. We’ll burst some eardrums.”

“Good.” He called up Engineering. “Scotty, how long will it take to get us flying again? Assuming you’d be able to work uninterrupted.”

“I could do it in an hour, Captain, but—”

“Then you’ll have an hour, Mr. Scott. Start now.”

“I’ve started already, Captain,” Scotty said, a little wryly. With any luck—and a great deal of good-will on Scotty’s part—that would be as close as he’d come to saying, _I told you so._

“Good man. Do a manual override and get us into warp as soon as you can. Security, I want two teams detached to Engineering.”

“And to monitor the life support systems, Captain?” Spock had migrated behind his chair somehow. Atypical mid-engagement, when there was the possibility of him being needed at his station—but then, this wasn’t mid-engagement anymore, was it? It was temporary defeat. And Spock tended to follow duty over protocol, anyway.

Which meant Spock thought he was needed there, at Kirk’s side. Well, he was. Always.

“Negative, Mr. Spock. If they target our life support, they’ll just be following their usual pattern. I’d rather lose time fixing the problem than lose lives preventing it. The engines, on the other hand—if we could break away unexpectedly—the engines are worth fighting for.”

He switched to shipwide comms.

“With the exception of those assigned to Engineering, all other personnel should report to deck fourteen. We’re going on lockdown.”

Let Venner contend with that, he thought with a trace of satisfaction. None of the ships he’d pillaged had had anything like a starship’s capacity to seal off a deck with nearly impenetrable security. Maybe Venner could trash the rest of the _Enterprise_, but he wouldn’t reach her crew.

Sulu turned around. “We’re going to leave the rest of the ship open to Venner, sir? He’ll have us stripped down to the bone in an hour.”

“Not quite, Mr. Sulu. I intend to stall. A time-honored command tactic.” He made himself smile, aiming for a serenity—and a confidence—he could hardly feel. “Bridge crew, you’re included in the order to retreat to deck fourteen. I’ll see you on the other side of all this.”

They filtered out slowly and reluctantly, and he had to just be thankful that Bones was still in sickbay, up to his ears in the handful of casualties they’d taken during the firefight; he’d have had a storm of argument to contend with there otherwise. And as it was, he still had Spock.

“And you,” he said quietly, “are included in bridge crew, Mr. Spock. I’m beginning to think no one on this ship grasps the command structure.”

“I do not think it is advisable for you to face Venner alone.”

“Then I won’t mistake you for having advised it. The order still stands.”

“Jim—”

Kirk shook his head. “If we had time, or if I were less sure, I might let you talk me out of it. But not now. I need you with the crew.” He turned to meet Spock’s eyes, wanting to hold tight to the sight of him even as he knew he had to send him away. This time the smile was unforced. “I’ll feel better knowing you have a handle on things.”

Spock hesitated a fraction of a second, but he said only, “I will expect your return,” and then left.

An ultimatum from a Vulcan. “Live long and prosper” as an order rather than a farewell.

He’d try, certainly.

He drummed his fingers restlessly. Stall, yes, but how? If he could only keep Venner and his men occupied until Scotty could have them up and running again, they could get out of range of the pirate ship’s weapons. That was the biggest danger to them, not the boarding party. Venner’s crew was said to be small, and a few men with handheld phasers could be overwhelmed by the _Enterprise_’s security team. Under ordinary circumstances. Not, however, when the whole ship would be vulnerable to being blasted out of existence by whoever Venner had left at his battle stations.

Restore the engines, enter warp, and arrest the boarding party. They’d be too weak to go after the pirate ship, and it would be long-gone by then, but that could wait. Nobody could have everything.

And he’d have nothing if he didn’t come up with a strategy before he came face-to-face with Venner the Hyena.

He wasn’t rumored to be a talker. And anyway, their conversational topics would be thin on the ground. The only personal thing Kirk knew of him was his preferred kind of victim.

His fingers stilled.

Too much of a leap. It had to be.

Pretty—and he hoped he’d aged out of that particular description by now. Soft-faced—same. Fair-haired—well, he supposed he had that. But he wasn’t the dewy-eyed type Venner chased. And Venner didn’t indulge his taste for rape in the course of his work anyhow, he was too methodical for that. He wouldn’t lose his head over _Kirk_, no, he’d need someone who appealed to him beyond reason, someone he wouldn’t be able to wait to break.

And he had talked a lot of people into a lot of things over the years, but he didn’t suppose he could talk Venner into thinking—

_You didn’t think those women were beautiful? _ McCoy’s voice, incredulous. _Those women used their brains—and these little red pills—to sell us on the idea that they were all Aphrodite, because that’s what they wanted._

“Five percent,” Kirk said aloud. “Mild telepathic component.”

He felt the idea settle down in the bottom of his stomach. It had the feel of a cold, heavy stone.

Yes, it might work. Venner would already hate him; he’d want to put him in his place. All he’d need was a push to do it in a certain more time-consuming way, a way that trained his violence on Kirk instead of the _Enterprise_, a way that slowed him down. He would think the only ticking clock was his own sense of urgency. He wouldn’t necessarily know the timeline Scotty had given for the engine repair. He _could _be delayed with the right incentive.

Of course, this might not be the right incentive. But he had nothing else. Nothing else—and he could feel the slight shudder now as the pirate vessel docked with them.

So there it was.

He heard a false steadiness in his voice as he said, “Computer, location of the remaining Venus drugs seized from Harry Mudd.”

“Locating.”

Any second now he’d feel the latch of the airlocks connecting.

“Remaining Venus drugs stored in locker 3-1-4-3.”

Kirk ran.

***

He swallowed the pills dry. A whole handful: he had no idea what the correct dosage would be and no time to work it out. He just had to hope. Hope and concentrate.

_Beauty, _he thought, but then he had to narrow it down because where his mind went—dark hair, warm eyes, arched eyebrow—wasn’t even within spitting distance of the image he wanted to put across. Not his idea of beauty. Venner’s. Golden, sparkly-eyed, peaches and cream innocence. Big eyes and parted lips. Very lovely, very breakable.

He felt a light sensation pass over him. It was a little like fingers combing through his hair.

He’d done harder things than this.

He walked to the docking bay at what was intended as a stroll, though he thought his limbs might have been a bit too stiff to manage it properly. Had to have the tone right, that was the thing. Had to look vulnerable, but not easily squashed. He’d delay Venner longer if he presented some sort of a challenge to him.

He stopped with his hand just an inch from the security panel and a took a deep breath. Wet his lips.

Then he let himself in and met Charles Venner.

“I believe you’re confused,” Kirk said. “You see, you’re on the wrong ship.”

Kirk appraised Venner, the man he’d known only from a computer file. Venner’s skin was an oily gray, marked up with grease and grime, long unwashed; his stubble stood out blue-black on his cheeks. But none of that mattered. Kirk wasn’t thinking of taking him to bed for his looks.

He hadn’t had time to find a mirror, but he could tell that however he looked now was apparently enough to strike a chord not only with Venner but with his people, too. They were all stares and silence.

It was his own damned plan, but he still felt his face growing hot. “Cat got your tongue?” He looked around. “All of your tongues? I’ll get us started. I’m Captain James T. Kirk, and you’re standing—illegally—aboard my ship, the _USS Enterprise_.”

“I’ve seen pictures of Captain Kirk,” Venner said. His voice was better than he deserved: smooth as caramel. “They didn’t capture you by half.”

“I don’t photograph well.”

The man’s smile was obscene. “No. Not nearly well enough.”

“You’ll just have to remember me, then,” Kirk said. “Fondly, I hope.”

“Very fondly, Captain.” The smile stayed. “You’ve been following us.”

He told himself that this was what he’d wanted. This was already more of a delay than any of Venner’s other seized ships had gotten. _Keep him talking, keep him where he is. Be an alluring challenge to a psychopath—there’s a mission for you._

“Yes,” he said, trying to keep his voice light and easy. Insouciant. “Although I prefer the term ‘hunting.’ You’re a rabid dog, Mr. Venner. Someone needed to bring you to heel.”

Venner’s muscles stiffened. “Does it feel like you’ve brought me to heel, Captain?”

Kirk shrugged. “Remains to be seen. But between man and dog, that’s the only outcome, long-term.”

“If I were you,” Venner said, “I’d watch my mouth.”

He was already simmering. Good, Kirk would kick him over into a boil.

“And why is that?”

“Men with pretty mouths should be more careful than that. It’s too tempting to think of ways to shut them up.” There was a snicker behind Venner, but mostly just more silence—_anticipatory _silence, now, Kirk noticed, with that cold weight back in his stomach. Venner’s crew knew these lines already. One of them was rubbing himself through his pants, watching the scene play out in front of them. It would be them, too. It would be all of them. There wasn’t a single one of them who could look away from him.

The Venus drug raced through his bloodstream, dizzying, intoxicating. He wanted to believe that—believe that there would be some high that would make this easier.

Venner wanted some provocation from him, that much was clear. He was waiting for the right words to come along, like the fish that leapt onto the hook would have a better taste than the one that was merely caught.

He said, “Mr. Venner, I wouldn’t let you _shut me up _for all the money in the world.” He was smiling, smiling to keep the nausea at bay. “Not you—and not any of your crew, for that matter.”

“_Let_,” Venner said, laughing. He was forward an instant, with one hand bruisingly tight on Kirk’s jaw while the other pressed a phaser to his temple. He ran his tongue over Kirk’s cheek and then bit him there, hard, his teeth finding what purchase they could. Blood joined the slick of hot saliva. “Pretty, pretty boy, you don’t know what you’re in for now. I think I’m going to have to mix business with pleasure. I think we _all _will.” He tapped his communicator. “Any signal from any of us,” he said into it, “and you boys turn this ship to dust. We’re going to be just a little longer than usual. After all,” he said, releasing the comm and treating Kirk to another one of those smiles, “who’s going to be hunting us now?”

***

He fought like a hellcat to stay inside the docking bay. He didn’t want them wandering the halls of the ship and doing too much thinking about how empty they were and what that meant about where the crew was and what they might be doing. Ideally he didn’t want them thinking at all.

So he goaded them. He spat and mocked and smirked; he did everything he could to convince Venner to take him then and there, right on the floor. But he couldn’t persuade them.

That was the flaw in his plan, he supposed. He’d made himself a very pretty thing, and _things _didn’t get listened to. Whatever he said or did after that—it didn’t matter to them at all. It made no difference.

And Venner had gotten it in his head that all this needed to play out on the bridge.

They dragged Kirk there, his boots scraping against the floor, his arms cinched in the vise-like grip of men on either side of him. He should have saved some of his strength, he thought, blinking sweat out of his eyes, trying to keep his head upright. He’d wasted himself on a fight he should have realized he was bound to lose. Once a man got the idea of fucking you over your own captain’s chair, he didn’t give the notion up again.

Kirk supposed he could count it as a minor victory that they were over halfway to the bridge before anyone realized the ship seemed deserted. Venner grabbed his chin again and cracked his hand across Kirk’s face when the grabbing didn’t get enough of a response.

“Where is your crew?”

“Beats me,” Kirk said. “Oh—no, that’s your crew.” He smiled. “Sorry. Bad joke.”

Venner dug his thumb into the bite-mark he’d left on Kirk’s cheek, pressing until Kirk’s vision went white with pain. “_Where_.”

“Safe. You don’t need them.” He made a kind of bleary eye contact. “You can’t even get it up for _me_, Mr. Venner.”

An especially brazen lie, given that he could feel Venner’s cock pressing against his leg. But he had Venner maddened at the moment, too far gone for analysis. Venner growled and got them moving again.

Stepping onto the bridge, even under these circumstances, still brought its own kind of reassurance. That was what Venner meant to spoil for him, admittedly—he meant to turn these memories against him.

He could do it, too. Kirk wasn’t naïve enough to overlook that. But he’d fight his way back to seeing this bridge as his home, do it tooth-and-nail if he had to; if Venner made him filthy, made _this_ filthy, he could get clean again. Later, later, later.

How long had it been? He needed to be like Spock, have some sort of mental timekeeper. But he couldn’t think about Spock, not now.

Venner forced him over the arm of the captain’s chair. There was very little waiting now. He had Kirk’s pants down between his ankles, snagged against his boots, within seconds. He bent over Kirk, his body heavy and somehow swelteringly hot, and bit Kirk’s earlobe lightly, teasingly. He was wearing some kind of cologne, a delicate layer of pleasant scent over the grime; it smelled clean, a little like lemongrass. Kirk had worn something similar before himself. Venner’s weight was pinning him, pressing the hard steel arm of the chair into Kirk’s stomach.

“I get you first,” Venner said into his ear. “While you’re still all tidy. And then I get you last, when you’re so used up you’ll want to lick my boots to thank me for bothering with you.”

“That—really doesn’t sound like me,” he said, his voice strained by the pressure against his chest.

“No, it doesn’t. But we’ll get you there.” Venner’s voice was almost tender.

He prodded two of his fingers into Kirk’s mouth, forcing them past his teeth and dragging them along his tongue. Kirk knew what he was doing and frantically worked up enough saliva to wet Venner’s hand as best as he could. He didn’t like doing it—he liked it even less given that it made Venner laugh and pat his cheek and say, “Eager boy!”—but the alternative was worse.

Someone whispered, “He’s so beautiful,” and Venner kicked Kirk’s legs apart.

Kirk closed his eyes. Count the seconds. Sixty seconds to a minute, sixty minutes to an hour. And an hour was all he needed.

***

“Spock. _Spock_.”

Spock calculated a ninety-six point four three percent chance that Dr. McCoy would simply continue repeating his name if he did not answer. The doctor’s typical impatience was counterbalanced by a massive stubbornness. He opened his eyes.

“Dr. McCoy,” he said with a calm he did not feel.

“It’s about time you answered me. What’s happening with Jim?”

Spock raised one eyebrow. “I have been in lockdown with you this whole time, doctor, as you are undoubtedly aware.”

“Don’t give me any of that,” McCoy said. He let out an exasperated snort. But if Spock was feigning calm, the doctor was feigning bluster; there was no irritation in his eyes, only a deep unchecked concern. “I know you’ve been sending out feelers to check on him. If you even _have _to—sometimes I’d swear he could sneeze and you’d know it all the way on the other side of the ship. Don’t tell me you were _meditating _just now because I won’t believe you.”

Spock wronged him greatly if he prioritized the tight clutch of his own feelings over McCoy’s own friendship with Jim—and, though he seldom chose to admit it, his own with McCoy. Violent agreement with each other, Jim had said.

“I am worried for him,” he said quietly.

The sudden presence of McCoy’s hand on his arm was not unwelcome. “What’s going on?”

“I am unable to pick up anything specific. That in itself troubles me.”

“Because you usually can.”

“Yes.” He wondered if McCoy knew the full significance of what the doctor himself had observed about how attentive his mind was to Jim’s. It was entirely possible he did. “Yes, usually I am at least aware of his general emotional state, as you would be of music playing in the next room. And concentrating increases the effect significantly. But not now, however much I try to clear my mind. I can discern his presence, but very little else. There is some… distortion. Interference.”

“Ever felt anything like it before?”

Spock frowned. “There is a slight resemblance to occasions when the captain has—overindulged.”

“So he feels drunk,” McCoy said, hopefulness creeping into his voice. “Hell if I wouldn’t put it past him to have somehow convinced them he’s their new best friend. Maybe they’ve all sat down to drinks.”

He shook his head. “This is far more severe than intoxication. And, under the circumstances, far more troubling.”

McCoy was almost vibrating with suppressed energy. “Dammit, Spock, I want to get out of this lockup and _do _something. I hate sitting here all cooped up like a brooding hen.”

“We could provide substantially more assistance if the lockdown were lifted,” Spock agreed.

McCoy’s gaze sharpened. “And as First Officer, you’d have the authority to lift the lockdown. Especially with the Captain being indisposed.”

He could not deny that. Nor could he deny he had already contemplated it. But he did not know Jim’s plan, and the thought of ruining it disturbed him. It could endanger Jim still further. “Do we have any contact with Engineering? Can their progress be monitored?”

“How should I know? I’m a doctor, not a gossip at a fencepost. If they get the engines up and running, we’ll find out when we get thrown into warp, that’s all I know about it.”

“We are near Mr. Scott’s initial stated deadline. The Captain may not have planned to ‘stall’ much longer than that. If more time should elapse, it may be more prudent to intervene.”

“Now that’s what I like to hear,” McCoy said.

“Your auditory preferences are irrelevant to the matter at hand.”

McCoy scowled. “I know you followed that just fine.”

“Yes,” Spock admitted. “But I thought you would gain an illogical pleasure from a misinterpretation. A compensatory gesture for my having ignored your first attempt to speak to me.”

He had not realized until then that McCoy had not relinquished his hold on his arm; he noticed the continued nature of the touch only when the doctor’s hand briefly tightened, squeezing him in a hard but not hurtful way. McCoy’s mouth twitched a little at the edge. He let go and stepped back.

“You’re a good man, Spock,” he said. There was the smallest of tremors to his voice. “Now don’t be too good or I’ll start to worry you’re getting anxious that Jim just might leave you stuck with me.”

Spock inclined his head, unwilling to dwell on the implications of that, and went to find Lieutenant Uhura. She was, as it turned out, already in contact with Engineering.

“Mr. Scott says they’re delayed,” she reported. “There’s something he needs for the repairs that isn’t in the engineering area, but his security’s not sure if anyone should venture out right now. They’re trying to cobble together a replacement. Could take up to an additional half an hour, Mr. Spock.”

Another half hour. With Jim’s presence in his mind faint and indistinct. He did not know if he could bear it.

“Find out the location of the part Mr. Scott requires,” he said. “If he does not have his substitution ready in thirty minutes precisely, please notify him that I will retrieve whatever is necessary.”

***

Longer than an hour. He could say that much for sure.

He must have passed out at some point, because he’d been moved. He was in one of the common areas now. Someone had been seeking softer furniture.

He had one hell of a headache. There was a knot forming up there past his hairline, one that felt almost the size of his fist. They were getting rougher—beating him was a substitute for restraints, apparently. And it was working, more or less.

They only needed one man at a time to subdue him by this point and damn them, they knew it. They’d leave him with the next man in line while the rest of them hunted for his crew.

They wouldn’t break through the lockdown. The security codes were too complex. He had to believe that.

_Because if they do, all this is for nothing? If only that were what determined how things go._

He was sore, as an understatement. Sore and bleeding rather badly, with blood and semen streaking his thighs and ass and matting him to the sofa he was resting on. He’d offered up his mouth eventually, when he’d needed a reprieve from the pain, when they could feel smugly sure he was too cowed to bite. But that had been worse, ultimately; they’d wanted more engagement from him then. And the Venus drugs were still running through his system full-tilt, which meant that when they could see his face, they were more avid than ever.

Seven men and one woman so far. That was his estimate.

The woman had come to him only after he’d been placed in the semi-privacy of the rec room, and he had tried to extract some meaning from that, some reason for her reticence that might be useful to him. She must have been made of ship-steel to survive her own crew; those were men who took vulnerability, smallness, and difference as invitations to hurt. Her eyes had been like chips of ice.

With her, he’d tried. He’d let the possibility of shyness make him hopeful.

“Do they do this to you?” he’d said quietly. “Do you have any immunity at all, as their shipmate?”

But she’d given him no answer, only unzipped her jumpsuit and sat on the sofa, opening her legs for him and motioning him down to his knees.

He’d been a little right, at least—when he did finally wring some pity from one of them, it was likely only because none of the others were there to witness it.

“Jesus. Here.”

A canteen, its steel mouth rimmed with slimy build-up, was shoved at him and tilted against his lips. The first swallow choked him—he was still sideways, bent over a table—but then he drank. The water was lukewarm and tasted dense with minerals, but it was water. More than that, it was kindness, and it felt like it had been a year since he’d had a drop of either.

“Thank you.” His voice was hoarse.

“I’m not gonna fuck you,” the man said. He sounded almost embarrassed. “Just—just stay in here a couple minutes and say I did.”

Kirk couldn’t imagine sitting, and he knew he wouldn’t keep his wits long if he lay down. Instead he straightened up—wincing—and made his way to the wall. He leaned against it, getting a better look at the man. He was chubby and dark-complected, with notably bright brown eyes. Tattoos swam up his bare arms.

“What’s your name?”

The man hesitated. “Afu.”

“Polynesian?”

“New Samoa.”

“I’ve been there,” Kirk said. “The Eastern hemisphere, at least. It’s pretty. Nice, balmy weather.” He drank again, more deeply this time. He could feel almost human again and he wasn’t sure he liked it, not when he might still be far from the finish line. But he needed this. He managed a weak, sideways smile. “Bet you’d rather be taking your shore leave there than here. You should get on a different boat, Afu. Venner’s isn’t headed to any good destination.”

“I’m still a pirate,” Afu said.

“There are pirates and pirates,” Kirk said. He wasn’t sure whether or not he was making any sense. To hell with it. “I appreciate the water.” Belatedly, his mind sharpened enough to be useful to him. “Is my crew all right?”

“We haven’t touched them. Haven’t even found them.” There was no pause there, thankfully. “Venner’s getting antsy they’re plotting something, though.”

“I’m sure they are. You could take that as a cue to leave, if you wanted.”

“They ought to know they’re safe where they are. They should just keep their heads down, not make any trouble. I wouldn’t risk my neck for Venner.”

“No,” Kirk agreed. He kept his tone neutral. “You wouldn’t be in their shoes. But then, Venner wouldn’t be in mine.” He held out the canteen. He couldn’t afford to be too comforted; he needed his guard where it was. “That’s the average time, Mr. Afu.”

Afu took his canteen back. “Kekoa,” he said.

“What?”

“Afu Kekoa.”

“All right,” Kirk said quietly. “Good evening, then, Mr. Kekoa.”

So he was upright after all when Venner returned, thanks to Mr. Kekoa. It felt good to shock him.

Though Venner hid his surprise well. He said, “You look more like a whore than a starship captain. But then, you did before, too. You’ve got the face for it.”

“I suppose you’re right. All the same, I don’t think I’ll keep the job.” _Or the face._

He must have made quite a picture, standing there naked from the waist down—even with Kekoa, he hadn’t bothered dressing again—and scaly with the dried semen stains of seven different men. He was bruised, bloodied, and sore. He didn’t have a single particle of power on his side to support him, but he offered Venner a smile all the same.

Venner still almost growled at him. There was a sick, drunken shine in his eyes, a kind of terror Kirk didn’t understand. “Get your ass over here.”

The joke was on him then; for all he wanted to seem blasé, he couldn’t quite get his legs to move. Evidently they balked at propelling him towards his next rape. That had been a short-lived bit of dubious triumph.

Though all things considered, it maybe saved his life, because he wouldn’t have put it past Venner to put a phaser bolt through his skull as revenge for… what? Not being sufficiently degraded? But this little lock-up of his muscles had Venner relaxed again, smiling himself, sure of his upper hand.

And that was, of course, when the ship entered warp.

***

Spock had taken Lt. Uhura’s communicator without intending to. He had simply lifted it from her hand the moment Mr. Scott’s voice had come through again, a crackle now of confirmation: “We’ve got it, Mr. Spock. The jury-rigged bit's holding fine, and I can throw her into gear from here.”

“Warp factor six, Mr. Scott.” Fast enough to make their escape along their predetermined course, not so fast as to already test the newly-repaired engines to exhaustion. “Engage.”

He barely felt the communicator slip from his hand. Even the reverberation of the ship achieving warp was of slight concern. His attention was unilaterally reserved for the fact that he could now reach Jim.

It would not be hard to locate him. Jim’s mind burned brightly, even when its clarity was blurred and its directness obscured. Spock could no more lose track of him, on their own ship, than he could lose track of his right hand. He moved with precision and without wasted steps, distantly aware that McCoy was close behind him, that security officers were rushing past them, following life-sign readings. Their chatter was just so much noise. They would contain the boarding party: very well. Spock could feel that the majority of outside presences were concentrated elsewhere, away from Jim. There was only one being in Jim’s company. A guard, perhaps?

He could not seem to relay any of this to Dr. McCoy. He could not share what he was thinking—what bitter taste was filling his mouth.

He started to run.

_Here_.

Spock opened the door.

He saw Jim, Jim naked except for his shirt, the shirt itself now irredeemably stained and mangled. His face somehow did not belong to him—was a smudge of borrowed, crushed youth, a mere shadow of his true beauty—and was mutilated even beyond that. He was bleeding. There was—

And he was smiling. Laughing.

While the man Spock surmised to be Charles Venner held him pinned against the wall—and held him there via the knife he’d thrust into Jim’s stomach.

Jim’s lips were wet with blood. “Doesn’t matter,” he was saying to Venner. “You’ve already lost. You—”

He had at last registered Spock’s presence, seeing him now over Venner’s shoulder. His mouth—the wrong shade to his lips, even before they’d been bloodied, the wrong curve to his smile, all of it wrong—shaped Spock’s name.

Spock was across the room in an instant. He threw Venner away from Jim, flinging him to the ground without the slightest care or hesitation. Venner’s head connected with the corner of a table, making a noise like a breaking gourd—and he lay still.

Jim said, “I think you cracked his skull.” His voice was thick. “Can’t say I think it’s a great loss. Spock—”

_Your eyes, _Spock thought. _Your eyes are still your own._

He stepped forward, catching Jim as Jim’s body suddenly slackened. Jim’s skin was clammy and cool beneath its sheen of sweat.

Spock had already suspected—already known, even, if he had to admit that—what had happened to Jim, what had been done to him, but to be this close—

“Bones, for God’s sake, close the door,” Jim said, his head snapping up.

“Let Spock close the damn door,” McCoy said. His hands were faultlessly steady as he put himself in Spock’s place beneath Jim’s arm; it was a calm belied by the way his eyes glistened. He spared Venner’s body only a single, ruthless glance: _yes, dead_. “You need a doctor right now more than you need a Vulcan.”

It took all his strength to step back from Jim, but he could not deprive him of medical attention, nor could he ignore Jim’s obvious wish for privacy. He made sure the door was not only closed but locked; only a senior officer could override the code.

“Nearly any other door on the ship and it would have closed by itself,” Jim said. There was a strained amusement beneath all his exhaustion. “The rec rooms were designed to encourage socialization. Open-door policy. Well, there you have it.”

“Jim, I’ve got to get you into sickbay.”

“I don’t disagree. But I’m not going there like this.”

“You’re not going to try to _walk_ there.”

A quiet chuff of a laugh. “I’m stubborn, Bones, not delusional. No, I mean I’m not going half-naked and looking like a page torn out of something by the Marquis de Sade. Find me a pair of pants, let me clean my face, and I’ll go wherever you like, however you like.”

“Captain, I don’t know if you know this, but you’ve got a stab wound in your belly. Right here under my hand. Your dignity—”

“Is very important to me,” Kirk said. He closed his eyes, robbing Spock of the one truly recognizable part of him. “And I won’t bleed to death with you in the room. Now, I think my clothes should still be somewhere on the bridge, but I won’t swear to it. They might not be fit to be handled, anyhow. Anything will do.”

McCoy’s exhalation was audible. “Spock, can you go find Jim some clothes? A basin of water?”

“I cannot leave,” Spock said.

He had held his position near the door as if frozen there, and now, unwillingly, he knew why. It was impossible to move away from Jim, yes. But it would be dangerous, so dangerous, to move any closer.

Right now, he needed some hold or claim, some way to counter the pulse in his head telling him that Jim had almost died, that Spock had almost lost him; his mind would overwhelm Jim’s if he were not extraordinarily careful. Under these circumstances especially, that would be unforgivable.

_I will not allow this to happen, _he thought. _I will not force a full bond on him. Our partial connection will heal as the drug leaves his system, and that will be enough._

He was fortunate both Jim and Dr. McCoy mistook his declaration that he could not leave for him speaking figuratively. He was surprised, in fact, that McCoy conceded the point so easily: “Well, all right. I guess you can’t.” He looked at Jim. “Will you let Nurse Chapel in, at least? She’s put a catheter tube in you in the past, so this isn’t anything she hasn’t seen before. And you’ll need a nurse anyhow.”

“Yes, all right. And I’ll thank you not to remind me of that catheter.”

“Big baby,” McCoy said without heat. He kept one hand on Jim’s stab wound but put the other on Jim’s shoulder, rubbing his thumb there in a kind of awkward caress. “And what’s wrong with your face, by the way?”

“Oh. Venner is—_was_, I suppose—a biter. There’s some other place he took a piece out of me, I just can’t remember right now. All in all, a hell of a night.” He met McCoy’s eyes. “I’ll need the full post-shore leave battery, you know.”

That was as close as he’d come yet to acknowledging—plainly and seriously—what had clearly happened; Spock sensed it was as close as he could come to extending them permission to ask about it.

McCoy reached Nurse Chapel and gave her the necessary instructions. Spock could hear the careful control in her voice as she confirmed she’d be on her way with a stretcher; she’d divulge nothing, he knew, even as she began to understand everything. Dr. McCoy had chosen his assistant wisely.

“I meant,” McCoy said, picking up the conversation again like he’d never left off, “that I’d almost swear you’ve gotten younger.”

“You’d almost be right. You can thank Harry Mudd for that.”

Spock took an involuntary step forward. “You’ve taken the Venus drug.”

It accounted for everything. The psi power of the drug was devoted to sending out a kind of telepathic interference; no wonder he had been unable to perceive Jim’s true mental state. The clear waters of his mind had been suffused with a kind of grotesque artificial dye. Spock supposed some would call that interplay of light and color beautiful, but to him it was only alien: an opacity that forced him to see only an unfamiliar surface where he was accustomed to seeing a well-known, well-loved heart. And the amount he must have taken to give it that kind of strength, even to a Vulcan mind—

He felt as though he were paying now for his hubris in telling McCoy that the drug had hardly affected him. He had not imagined anything like this.

“I had to sell Venner his preferred type,” Jim said. “I figured this would delay him.”

All this? Just so they would not lose any ship fixtures and supplies to scavengers?

But he could already imagine Jim’s retort. They were a _Constitution_-class Starfleet ship, not a mercantile vessel; they carried more than ordinary supplies and equipment. Their compartments were stocked with scientific samples, vaccines, and priceless diplomatic gifts; their computers held data classified at the highest levels. Their ship represented—embodied—the work of the hundreds who lived on it, and would affect the lives of millions more. It was a symbol of Starfleet, a symbol of the Federation itself. And aside from all that it was, in many ways, their home. Harm done to the _Enterprise _was not negligible.

Nor had Venner been necessarily predictable. They could not have safely assumed he intended to follow the same patterns of behavior with them as he had with the ships he had targeted intentionally. They had been his sources of income; the _Enterprise _had been his enemy.

If he had been able to bypass the lockdown—

He could not know that it was right for Jim to have gambled thus with his own life. But he could not say that the stakes had been meaningless.

Yet it made him ache.

“Of all the things to do,” McCoy said. He clutched Jim’s shoulder even more tightly. “Dammit, who knows what kind of chemical imbalance that stuff could give you? And how much did you take, anyway? Spock couldn’t even tell what was going on with you!”

Jim looked at him, then, and the glance held more emotions than Spock could identify. “As much of it as I could swallow. I couldn't chance anything else. I didn’t mean to worry you, Spock.” He swallowed. “Will you—will you come back over here?”

He could not refuse such an entreaty. He resumed his place at Jim’s side, standing close, intending to offer whatever reassurance proximity could give. Not daring to touch.

There could not have been a situation more tailor-made to accelerate a Vulcan’s need to create the strongest possible bond. It would be as natural as exhalation. But that was among Vulcans. Another Vulcan could have repelled an unwanted bond, if one was thrust upon them, and Jim could not.

He would _not _create the link without Jim’s knowledge and consent; he told himself once again that to do so would be an unforgivable violation, a shameful abuse of Jim’s humanity. And he refused to ask Jim’s permission at a time when Jim could not possibly wish to give it.

He could not let his instincts drive him.

“That’s better,” McCoy said. “I didn’t like you hanging back there over my shoulder, looming like a specter of doom.” There was a knock at the door. “Ah, that’s Christine. Spock, give Jim your arm,” and he all but thrust Jim into Spock’s embrace as he went to let Nurse Chapel inside.

He had meant it as a kindness, Spock knew. McCoy’s logic was sometimes oblique, but here he could read it well enough: _Give him an excuse to touch. Give them both some comfort._

His control had been a lock upon his need. Feeble, to be sure, but there.

Jim’s bare skin against his own was not even a key. It cut through his defenses like an explosion, sending him reeling.

The tie between them, naturally formed and never brought to its full potential strength, pained him like an amputated limb. The drug had all but severed it. He could not hold Jim’s thoughts within his own, not as slippery as they were under this wash of chemicals. To touch Jim but not _feel _him only doubled his agony.

_A full bond could not be blocked this way, _something inside him whispered. _Create one. Take him, body and soul; protect him, eradicate the presence of others on his flesh. Offer him all you are. Annihilate what separates you._

Spock bit down on his lip until blood sprang into his mouth. _I will not hurt him.  
_

Every second of contact between them burned.

But this was not the _plak tow_; this battle was winnable. It had to be.

_I refuse._

“Spock?” Jim’s hand was against Spock’s cheek now. His touch was cool, still, though blood beat rapidly underneath his skin, his pulse a palpable throb against Spock’s skin.

Shock—he was in shock, however little it showed on the mask he’d made to entice Venner. Beneath the blood, beneath the bruises and streaks of rough usage, Jim’s face was still shades of gold and rose, his skin almost translucent in its clearness. Spock hated it. It was a lie that hid Jim from him, and he wanted to peel it away and cast it aside.

“Spock, can you hear me? Bones, something’s happening to him.”

“No, only one thing at a time’s allowed to happen to either of you,” McCoy said, “so it’s musical chairs and Spock’s left without a seat,” but as he moved Spock away from Jim, his hands were gentle. “Spock, whatever’s got your brain fried, can it wait until we see the captain into sickbay?”

He had to manage some kind of response. “Yes. I am not in need of medical attention.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” McCoy muttered. “Come on, Jim-boy, let’s get you dressed.”

“All right, Bones,” Jim said softly. He turned away from Spock, all the way away from him, and kept himself upright with the help of Dr. McCoy and Nurse Chapel.

“These may be a little loose,” Nurse Chapel said as she helped Jim into the borrowed trousers. “I thought that would be more comfortable for you.”

“Thank you, Ms. Chapel. It’s appreciated.”

She nodded. “Now I’ll wash your face. I’m going to try to avoid touching that bite—it’ll need a deeper cleaning and disinfecting than I can give you right now—so let me know if I’m hurting you.”

But Jim would not let her know. Not now, when he seemed inclined to cling to every scrap of strength he could hold to. Spock could not let him be suffer further pain. He said, “I will take that duty.”

“No, you won’t,” Jim said. His tone was clipped. “Let Ms. Chapel do her own job, Spock.”

“But I—”

“When I’m in sickbay and doubtlessly drugged into unconsciousness, if Dr. McCoy would be so kind, then you’ll be acting captain, but at this exact moment you’ll follow orders. Is that clear?”

Spock put his hands behind his back, clenching them into tight fists to keep himself from reaching forward. “Yes, Captain. Acknowledged.”

Nurse Chapel looked back and forth between them, her face troubled, but began to delicately dab the blood from Jim’s face without further comment. She was scrupulous, undoubtedly. He saw no pain in Jim’s eyes that had not already been there.

***

Kirk wanted to go on sinking into petulance—he had damn well earned it, hadn’t he?—but he’d said it himself: he hadn’t shrugged off the weight of the captaincy just yet. The job demanded better of him than that. And being short with Spock was criminally unfair.

But God, the look of unguarded disgust and horror on Spock’s face when they’d touched—

_Get a hold of yourself, _he thought sharply. _You _know _Spock. He wouldn’t be appalled by you, not for this, and if somehow he were, he’d be too good a man to show it. He touched me and he felt what all had happened, felt it firsthand, and it rocked him back, that’s all. He’s appalled _for _me. It’s kindness, not judgment—whatever it feels like._

Yes. He knew that. His confidence in Spock’s decency was too bone-deep to be permanently shaken by this. He’d overreacted, and he knew it.

That little whip-crack he’d laid against Spock’s feelings, just to salve his own—he regretted it.

It was just that it was Spock’s touch he wanted right now. But that was also something he’d just have to control—and something he ought to have been used to controlling by now.

He made himself focus, helped along by Bones obligingly shooting him with a painkiller hypo. Nothing like the sudden, aggressive smack of compressed air to wake a person up.

“Spock,” he said. “I got brusque just then. I’m sorry.”

“And we’re all baffled by how you wouldn’t be even-keeled right now, clearly,” Bones said, with a kind of upwards glance Kirk judged was either a heavenly appeal or an exhausted eye-roll. “Now give that a second to kick in and we should be able to move you without making you yowl.”

“Doctor, I’ve never yowled in my life.” And ah, Bones had been very generous: he already felt like he was floating. Well, his judgment had just become officially impaired, then, and he was almost grateful for it. “Mr. Spock, you have the conn. Set whatever course will let us drop our new friends off quickly. And—a note in the file of the pirate Afu Kekoa, say I’ll serve as a character witness there.”

“I am unimpressed by the character of any of Venner’s crew,” Spock said stiffly.

“I don’t intend to get him off completely.” Poor choice of words, all things considered. “But there are… pirates and pirates.”

Spock inclined his head. “I will do as you ask.”

“And that’s the last thing I’ll ask for a while, because I’m starting to feel like an untethered balloon. Bones, what the hell was in that hypo?”

Bones pursed his lips. “You needed it, Jim.”

“I don’t think you gave me anything even half this good when that Midian manticore tried to chew my arm off. You can move me wherever you like. I’m almost prepared to take you dancing.”

“No, thank you,” Bones said. He patted the side of Kirk’s head. “I’ve danced with you before, Jim. You always have to lead. All right—Spock, if you can hold the stretcher steady, Christine and I can boost Jim up.”

Sharp. He’d noticed Spock keeping his distance and was deferring to it, and doing it casually enough that Spock wouldn’t be inclined to argue with him about it.

“You know, Bones,” he said as he let himself be levered up onto the stretcher, “sometimes I think I don’t give you enough credit for tact and diplomacy.”

“Only sometimes? I’m hurt.”

Kirk kept his eyes closed for the ride to sickbay. He was obliged to do a lot of things, maybe, but not to make eye contact with every worried crewman they happened to pass on the way; he’d just as soon not know who’d seen him like this, even with his pants back on, even with the bit of cleanup Chapel had done on him.

He didn’t look around again until Bones was installing him in a real bed. He saw Spock still there in the corner.

He felt his mouth flex in a weary kind of smile. “You’re supposed to be on the bridge, Mr. Spock. We’re coming down from a crisis.”

“I wanted to acknowledge my departure without disturbing you.”

“Consider me undisturbed.”

“I find it hard to go,” Spock said. There was a faint rawness to his voice, the sound of Vulcan control scraped against Vulcan feeling. He took a deep breath and then, with almost absurd formality, offered Kirk the _ta’al_. “Rest, Jim.”

He left like all the hounds of hell were after him.

“I will never understand that Vulcan,” McCoy said, glancing after him. “Telepaths himself cross-eyed trying to find you and then huddles off in the corner and _then_ sticks to you like glue.” He laid out a couple more hypos, what Kirk guessed to be the requested post-shore leave round of drugs for STI prevention. A sight usually reserved for ensigns still wet behind the ears. “The third of these will sting a little.”

Doctor-to-ordinary-mortal translation: they’d all sting, but the third would feel like a viper bite even through the haze of the heavy duty painkiller.

And—ah—he was right.

“This is why most people avoid sickbay,” Kirk said, rubbing at the injection site.

“And here I thought we had a foxtrot in our future.” He hesitated only as he picked up the last hypo, the one Kirk guessed was the sedative. “You’re sure about this?”

“I asked for it, didn’t I?”

There was a flush on McCoy’s cheeks now. “If I give you this, you’ll be out like a light. You won’t know which way is up. You won’t be able to give any feedback.”

“I’m well-practiced at that for the day, Bones.” He regretted that the instant he’d said it: that was what Bones was trying to _spare _him from, dammit. “I trust you. Being conscious enough to tell you hands off—that’s not my priority.”

Of course, that said nothing about what his priority _was_. Fair enough, since he didn’t know. Escaping further humiliation, probably. He didn’t want to look at Bones and remember this exam; he didn’t want Bones to have to come up with soothing nonsense to feed him during it. And he wanted blankness, blackness, sleep.

He didn’t know how much of that Bones could guess. But Bones picked up the hypospray.

Kirk closed his eyes. The shot hit him like mist, like a blessing.

***

He awoke in his own quarters. And not alone, either, but with Spock sitting in a chair near his bed, one careful finger marking his place in a now-closed copy of _Blue at the Mizzen_.

Kirk rubbed his eyes, trying to ignore the warm spread of relief at seeing Spock so close to him again. “That’s the last book in a very long series, Mr. Spock. Either you’re starting in the wrong place or I’ve been asleep longer than I thought.”

“To answer that, Captain, I would have to know how long you believe you’ve slept.”

“Fair enough.” He rolled his shoulders in circles, shaking out the stiff muscles. It felt like the answer could have been a week. “Twelve hours?”

“That is roughly correct. Dr. McCoy and I returned you to your room eleven point four five hours ago, following the successful completion of your abdominal surgery. It was apparently a simple procedure, and he thought you would prefer to recuperate here, where you would have greater privacy.”

“Given my other injuries? I owe him a bottle of brandy. And you’ve been sitting here—”

“Since the conclusion of my shift.”

Since Spock didn’t follow that with an exact numerical reference, Kirk was guessing there was some kind of hedging going on here, but he was too tired to follow up on it.

“Are you in any discomfort?”

A polite way to ask if his ass still hurt, most likely. Though he supposed there was the stab wound in the mix as well—he almost owed Venner a favor for giving him a wound he could more easily admit to. “Negative, Mr. Spock. Though I do appreciate the babysitting.”

“I am unfamiliar with that term.”

“An Earth practice. A parent assigns a trusted caretaker to look after a child, the caretaker’s called a ‘babysitter.’”

“Fascinating. But in this case, inaccurate. I would not describe my presence in those terms.”

Kirk pointed at the bookshelf. “The one with the yellow spine, on the far left. _Master and Commander_. That’s the first if you want to borrow it.”

“Thank you.” Spock rose, went to the bookshelf, and swapped out the volumes. He examined the cover illustration of a tall ship. “I have never been aboard an Earth sailing vessel.”

The notion of Spock on some wooden deck, salt air ruffling that impeccably coiffed black hair of his, was like a fresh breeze in Kirk’s mind. He smiled. “I could take you. It’d have to be a smaller boat, though. Navy frigates and the like haven’t been made of wood for, oh, several centuries now. But we could still take you out on the water.”

“The possibility intrigues me. If the plan is unobjectionable to you in one point two five years, I would like to pursue it.”

“My schedule is yours, Spock.” He raised his eyebrow as Spock simply took his seat again. “And… you’re not going anywhere, are you?”

“I do not intend to do so.”

“And why is that?”

“Lieutenant Sulu currently has the conn, and as our repairs have been completed and we are now headed to our destination at warp six with no evidence of further engine trouble, and as I remain reachable in the event of an emergency, I am not needed on the bridge.”

“Very logical,” Kirk said.

“If you object to my company—”

“No, of course not. When have I ever? But I’m not made of glass, Spock.”

“It would be illogical to suggest so. I am quite familiar with human anatomy.”

In another time and another place, that sentence would have sparked something in him; he seemed to be all out of tinder at the moment. “Half the damage amounts to cuts and bruises, all mended, and the rest is on its way to join it, with all due gratitude to Bones and modern medicine. If you start taking up some sort of sickbed vigil for me whenever I stub my toe—”

“I do not agree that is a proper comparison,” Spock said sharply.

“Why not?”

“If our positions were reversed—”

“They aren’t!”

He hadn’t meant to raise his voice. If he’d done it with anybody but Spock, he’d—well, this was the kind of situation he only ever got into with Spock, wasn’t it? Too comfortable for his own good. But if he’d done it with anybody but Spock, he’d have apologized. But he’d rather go through the whole damned thing again, start to finish, then listen to Spock speculate on a _reversal_.

He could quiet down, at least. “That’s not a possibility I’m interested in exploring, Spock. I’ll concede the point without it.” He traced around the cotton border of the bandage plastered on his cheek. “Did Bones say if this would scar? The bite?”

“It will not.”

“Good.” He didn’t want to have to remember Venner every time he looked in the mirror; he’d be remembering him long enough without that.

His body’s healing had already outpaced the rest of him. Unless he missed his guess, somebody had even been brushed his teeth for him, leaving behind nothing but the clean taste of mint. He had to think his mind would catch up with all that, sooner or later. He’d forget what they looked like, forget the feel of them, forget the sick low terror of knowing it was going on longer than he’d ever readied himself for.

And speaking of readiness…

“And the Venus drugs? Are they scrubbed out of my system yet? Or do I still look like Venner’s glamour boy? I never even got to see it, you know. It must have been something.”

“The drug has left you,” Spock said. He sounded oddly strained. “I can no longer sense its presence in your mind, and your features are as they always were. As I, for the record, prefer them.”

His chuckle was weak. “Flatterer.”

Spock inclined his head. He was running one finger up and down the spine of his book, which might have been the only nervous gesture Kirk had ever seen from him. “My presence here is selfish, Jim.”

“You’ve been meaning to catch up on your reading?”

That face of his, like glass stained dark enough a fool could think there was no light on the other side—Kirk had gotten used to watching for the slightest change, for the degree or two that let him see Spock more clearly. And at some point he had started to see Spock all the time, as though Spock was always the brightest thing in the room.

Now, though: nothing. This wasn’t Vulcan reticence. This was Spock throwing up blackout curtains. Purposeful obstruction.

He watched Spock’s elegant hands flexing against his book, bending it back and forth now.

“Spock,” he said softly. “What is it?”

Spock released his grip on the book, resting it on his knees. There was a faint tremor in his fingers. “It is immaterial.”

“I don’t think so.” _Everything about you matters to me_.

“It is only an impulse,” Spock said. For the first time, Kirk noticed the imprint his teeth had left in his lower lip: the cost of control. “I do not need any—accommodation.”

All this effort just to yank these vague disclaimers out of him. The only time he’d seen Spock like this before—

Kirk’s heart sank. “Spock, tell me this isn’t… biological.”

Spock hesitated. “I cannot lie to you. And I deeply, deeply regret the circumstances.” There was, unbelievably, a sheen of sweat on his forehead now. “This is not the time I would choose. I know you are in distress.”

“Distress, what does my distress have to do with anything? I mean we’ve got prisoners, we’ve only just got the ship limping along and now we need to detour to—” He stopped. Detour to Vulcan, so he could stand by under the beating sun while Spock got married. While Spock became unreachable to him. He’d thought they were looking at a seven-year lapse, seven whole years in which to make the impossible happen. He had hoped—but that didn’t matter now. He closed his eyes. “Do you have another intended now? On Vulcan? I take it you didn’t know you’d have a, ah, resurgence again so soon.”

Spock’s mouth was a rigid line. “We are talking at cross-purposes, Jim,” he said softly. “I do not require transport to Vulcan. Transport to Vulcan, in fact, would be pointless.”

He was too frayed at the seams right now to go ferreting after something that would only break his heart. “I don’t understand. Tell me what’s going on and what you need. Plainly.”

“That is difficult.”

Broken heart or no broken heart, Kirk really might kill him. “_Try_.”

“Yes.” Spock looked somewhere over his shoulder. And continued to say nothing.

“Perhaps you’d be more comfortable if I were still unconscious,” Kirk said, resting his forehead against his hand. “You could address yourself to the bulkhead.”

“It is _you_.”

He lifted his head. It felt like his ears were ringing. “What’s me?”

“You are the choice my blood has made.” Their eyes finally met. The glass was clear again. “You are the choice _I _have made, Jim, at every turn and at every hour. What I did not choose is to have the need for consummation forced on me at this time. I will obviously refrain. I need never mention it again.”

No, that wasn’t his ears ringing. It was blood pounding in them; his heart was racing. “Let me see if I understand you. You—want me.” No, dammit, he’d ask the whole question; he couldn’t do this by halves. He had to know. “You love me.”

“Affirmative,” Spock said. His face was colored in a way Kirk had never seen.

“_Have _loved me, in fact, for some time.”

“For two point three five years. That is my current estimate.”

He had no corresponding number of his own. He wasn’t even sure when he’d realized that he couldn’t imagine being separated. One day, very simply and without fanfare, Spock had become essential to him; he had begun to evoke the same lasting, longing fascination Kirk had always felt for the stars. 

He said, “Do you know that I love you?”

Spock’s lips parted slightly, the Vulcan equivalent of a dropped jaw. It was difficult to explain the beauty of it. “—I did not.”

Kirk almost laughed. The circumstances of it were so _terrible_. All their time together, all those chess games, all those diplomatic gatherings with chilled wine and the privacy of the crowd… and here they were, within hours of Venner, within hours of Venus drugs and rape and a knife in his gut. It must have been a Starfleet mandate for good news to only come at the worst possible time.

_Don’t let it matter. Spock is every tomorrow you’ll ever have, if you’re lucky. This is just today. Grin through the bad parts and bear it as best you can. You’ll both get through it.  
_

“I love you,” he said again. “I’d been meaning to do something about that one of these days.” He smiled. “When I got up the nerve and could shake out the complications. Okay, so your hand’s been forced as far as the timing goes. Don’t worry about it.”

“I cannot help _worrying about it_,” Spock said. He looked almost dizzy. “You understand that I feel biologically compelled to—”

“Throw me down on the bed and have your way with me?”

“I do not see any humor in this situation.” If he bent that book any further he’d snap its spine. “The compulsion is not physical. Not precisely.”

“But I thought—” Clearly he’d thought wrong. “You said it was biological.”

“Vulcans,” Spock said with a slightly aggrieved tone that Kirk found perversely welcome in the midst of all the strangeness, “are entitled to more than one biological drive, Captain.”

“You play them very close to your chest,” Kirk said. “All right, what’s this one?”

Spock exhaled. “You were in danger,” he said quietly. “You were hurt. I did not prevent it.”

“You couldn’t have.”

Spock didn’t seem to consider that fact especially relevant. “Vulcan’s natural climate has always been very harsh. The bonds we form allow us to shelter one another, to sustain life in an environment not often friendly to it. To have seen you vulnerable, knowing I had left you all but unbonded when you are—” He shook his head. “There is no human language with a correct word. When you are precious to me, Jim. Thousands of years of evolution tell me that I almost lost you—and that since I almost lost you, I can no longer afford to wait to form our permanent bond.”

He couldn’t see the problem. “Then don’t. This is what you had with T’Pring, isn’t it?”

“Similar in form, yes, but that was just a shadow of what our bond would be.”

“Like that was an engagement and this would be a marriage.”

“Yes,” Spock said, and at least some of that awful agony had bled out of his expression now. At the moment there was only hope.

As for himself, Kirk didn’t have a name for what was in his heart right then, a white brilliance that made him feel incandescent. “I say yes. Without hesitation, Spock. And I ought to be doing this properly—” Bones would never agree to be his best man if he ripped all his sutures trying to kneel, but he had to; he would like at least _part _of this to go as he’d once imagined. He slid out of bed and onto his knees. He twisted away from the memory of the last time he’d been in this position. The present and the future, that was all he wanted right now: not to grin and bear it, but to light out to new places. He shifted, going to only one knee. “Marry me, Spock.”

He couldn’t say it was much of a proposal. But all the right words had gone out of his head, and under the circumstances, Spock might appreciate things being expedited.

Spock knelt too, but did not touch him.

“It is not right to do this now,” he said. There was so much pain in his voice. All Kirk wanted to do was relieve him of it.

“This is why you wouldn’t touch me before, isn’t it? I thought—I was worried you were disgusted with me. I tried to believe it was just that picking up my memories right then was too unpleasant, but—”

“It was the absence of your memories that was too unpleasant. I could not touch your mind at all. Jim.” He put his hand on Kirk’s cheek, at last. It was the wounded side, and he almost wanted to tear the bandage off so nothing got between them. “I cannot be disgusted with you. I understood your reasoning.”

_Yes, but I still put you through hell. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know._

“I feared I would force a bond on you,” Spock said. His thumb traced the square outline of the bandage. “I burned with it. Fighting it was like fighting the need for air.”

Kirk knew Spock was telling him this as a warning, not a seduction; it was an apology. All those words—_force _and _burn _and _fight_—he expected they would remind Kirk of Venner.

Well, he didn’t care if they did. The difference was all the difference. Spock was drowning, and he was telling Kirk that Kirk didn’t have to let him breathe.

He leaned forward and pressed his lips against Spock’s. A kiss was a new thing for the day. A way to start something. A kiss, and he had his own face, and the ship was safe, and someday he’d take Spock sailing. And all the rest of this, all the parts of the time he didn’t want to keep, would be lost on the blue.

He moved Spock’s hand, splaying Spock’s fingers against his meld points. “You don’t have to keep holding your breath. I want this too.” He knew Spock could feel the play of Kirk’s own breath against his mouth. He hadn’t moved away. He wouldn’t.

He saw the moment when he won Spock over—saw the acceptance of the imperfection of the moment in those warm brown eyes.

They were both romantics, then. But there’d be time for all that later. Time for want rather than need.

“_T’hy’la_,” Spock said, his lips brushing Kirk’s. With his other hand, he intertwined their fingers, a hard and possessive Vulcan kiss in contrast to the softness of the human one. He cherished both and wanted Spock to feel that from him—if he couldn’t give him desire right now, at least he could give him this, this flare-up of love as bright as a flame.

He felt Spock begin to knit their souls together. It asked more of him than he’d known it would—Spock had always tested the limits of his imagination, had always been _more_—but he allowed it; it was like a ghostly hand passing over his mind, making doors and cupboards flutter open. He didn’t always like what he saw there. But Spock took all of it nonetheless, took all of him, and opened up his own mind to Kirk’s tentative, fumbling reciprocity. It was more intimate than anything he’d ever done in bed and he felt more virginal than a teenager. He knew nothing. He could only try to be kind, try to return what Spock was giving him.

_Yes, all of him, I claim all of him, he is mine. Parted from me and never parted, never and always touching and touched. _Those were the words, weren’t they? He’d always felt they were burned into his memory.

_Yes, _Spock said. _I said these words before to another. Now they are only yours, as am I._

And then the bond relented, easing up enough in its intensity to allow him to see again, to let in all the ordinary sensations he’d almost forgotten. He felt so sore and dirty he could have been made up of nothing but surgical incisions and bruises and stains like handprints. The floor was unforgiving.

But there was Spock, his Spock. And he could feel Spock’s love for him, still; he could feel Spock’s concern.

“Sit on the bed with me,” Kirk said, and Spock did.

They had only two kisses between them. It was strange, still, to be so close to him, and all the stranger to think that he was allowed this now.

“You’re mine,” he said thoughtfully. “You know, I never looked at it from that angle. Not as much as I should have. I thought I’d give you all there was of me, you know, a bit battered and worse for wear, but gift-wrapped to the best of my abilities.” He smiled. “And you have that. But I—I need to take good care of you, Spock.”

“I am not notably fragile.”

“All the same.”

He leaned, letting their shoulders touch. Married now, more or less, but he could still feel Spock’s muscles tense for just a moment at the unfamiliar contact. For some reason it made him hopeful—as if needing such a long learning curve with each other would guarantee them having the time for it. He liked long missions, commitments to facing whatever challenges happened to come.

He said, “Do you know the Greek legend of Theseus?”

Strange pillow talk, but then, this was a strange wedding night. Spock indulged him. “A mythical prince of Athens, perhaps best known for his defeat of the minotaur.”

“Aided by Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, princess of Crete. She’s the one who gave Theseus the ball of string so he could find his way through the labyrinth. It was always my favorite myth. I had a whole massive collection of them when I was younger, but that was the one I read over and over. Theseus volunteering himself as a tribute to save the youths and maidens of Athens. Ariadne and her cleverness. I wanted to be both of them put together, all heroism and brains. Well, no wonder I grew up to be Finnegan’s whipping boy for a while there. Ambition and naivete are a bad combination, especially with a know-it-all streak. It took me growing up a little to realize there were parts of the story I’d ben ignoring.”

Spock raised an eyebrow.

“Theseus leaves Ariadne. Promises to take her with him, but he doesn’t. She was a tool for him, like her ball of string.” He shrugged. “He was a tool for himself. Useful handsomeness successfully leveraged. I’ve imitated that part of the story more times than I’d like.”

“You did not compel Venner,” Spock said.

“No. But I might have, if I’d needed to. I can’t walk away from seven youths and seven maidens and call it acceptable losses. If I can’t find a ball of string, I’ll use whatever it takes. At least Venner was no innocent Ariadne—but I’ve met her before, in various guises. Fine, though, we’ll forgive it. Theseus won his people’s safety. But—” He felt the smile twist oddly on his mouth. “But he thought too much about his victory. He was so damn flush with success that when he came home, he forgot to change the sails on his ship from black to white. It was what was supposed to let his father know he was still alive. The old man saw him on the horizon and jumped from the parapet.”

He couldn’t get by with just their shoulders rubbing against each other. He wrapped his fingers around Spock’s wrist—close enough to a Vulcan kiss, but not, he hoped, with the distraction of one.

“I get tunnel vision,” Kirk said quietly. “That’s why we burned out our engines chasing Venner in the first place. And that’s why I didn’t think about what it would do to you to find me like you did, what it would do to you if I took the Venus drug.”

He sensed no surprise in Spock, and probably he shouldn’t have. Spock had been in his head, after all, and known him for years even beside that. None of Kirk’s faults could come as a shock to him.

Spock said, “You were required to be the prince of Athens.”

“And I can’t promise the captain of the _Enterprise _won’t ever have to play the prince again. We don’t live safe lives. I have a taste for victory—and we both have our duties.”

Spock’s gaze was kinder than he deserved, all things considered. “‘I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more.’”

“First myths and now poetry.” To hell with it: he held Spock’s hand after all. “Always touching. Never parted. I swear I’ll always remember to change the sails for you, Spock. No victory will ever make me forget that again. No defeat either.”

Spock’s hand tightened around his. “I trust any promise you make me, Jim.”

“Forever, then. And I’m going to redo that proposal under better circumstances, for what it’s worth.”

“My answer can hold no suspense.”

“Sometimes we humans like to pop the question properly anyhow.” And he liked having it on the horizon. They had a mess to deal with, the clean-up slog of victory that never did it make it into the myths, the court cases and rumors and bad dreams.

Spock slid his thumb along the indentation between two of Kirk’s knuckles. Wonder radiated from him. Worry. Tenderness. “Then,” he said, “I will be pleased to anticipate you.”


End file.
